Cuisenaire Rods

I know I have mentioned before we use Cuisenaire rods for school work.  Here are a few things we've been doing with them. 

Story Telling   

Believe it or not those pieces are not just thrown together.  There was an elaborate story with a squirrel and a fairies and people.  

Sorting by Color/Size

Determining who pulled the longest/shortest rod out of a bag

Making Snakes

Lining up the pieces from smallest to largest and making "The Staircase"

Taking those lined up rods, and turning them into a mini-labyrinth

I should mention here that we had a large set of red counting rods, which were the precursor to using the Cuisenaire rods.  The red rods were large (the tallest was 1 meter, well taller than O when I first presented it to her).  The rods were big enough for her to actually walk through our larger scale labyrinth.  That is how she came up with the idea to make a tiny one for her fingers. 

Skip forward several weeks to where we are now.....

(No, we did not do all of the above activities in one sitting.  One activity per day, and we did the same activity several days in a row--about a week)

Now we are giving the rods names.  The smallest white rod, is '1'

How many white rods does it take to be the same size as the red rod?  '2'

We also compare sizes again, this time using numerical values

'The 10 rod is bigger than the 8, by how much?'